Common prosperity as keystone of society

Editor's note: Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism and a key feature of Chinese modernization. Fransesco Sisci, Senior Researcher at Renmin University of China and Former Cultural Counselor and Director of the Cultural Center of the Italian Embassy in China, shared his thoughts about Chinese modernization. The views expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

CGTN: Chinese President Xi Jinping has frequently stressed that "common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism and a key feature of Chinese modernization" and has called for adhering to a people-centered development philosophy and promoting common prosperity while pursuing high-quality development. What are your views on this vision?

Sisci: Common prosperity is the keystone of any society. A great social disparity creates animosity, hostility within society. So it is extremely important to have a very cohesive social structure in China and therefore the well-being which has been created in the past 40 years has to be distributed in a better way, and that could help future development of the country, and also of the world, because China is an important part of the world, with 20 percent of the global population.

CGTN: How do you see the significance of the exchange of civilizations to promote the global diversity of civilizations? How do you evaluate the impact of cultural hegemony on world peace and development?

Sisci: I think what is important is that China is changing its own civilization. And in this change, China now is no longer China of 40 years ago or 100 years ago. It, is something different. China is now more imbedded in the world that perhaps ever in its history. In this process, it is extremely important that China doesn't lose its roots, because losing its roots would be a major failure for China. But I would say [it would be also] a major failure for everybody else. Everybody can be inspired by Chinese traditional and modern achievements, in many ways.

We have to keep our traditional values. We have to value our values. But anyway, we have also to embrace and understand others, and this is very difficult to have it in practice. But it's important and crucial. Because if we just use our values to close off the rest of the world, is a dying proposition. However, if we want to embrace the values of the world, losing our traditional values, this will never happen. So it is a tightrope. It is very difficult to have it in practice, however, is the only way forward.

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